Japan

Two weeks in Tokyo
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Planets aligned and it appears that I got a round trip two week stay in Tokyo in mid-August with a few friends.
Okay, great. I always had a few places I wanted to visit in the area (mostly tourist stuff but there were other things like an all-nighter photographing in Odaiba and seeing if a
Mos Burger
beats a
Modern Burger
) but I would of expected all that to take a week at most. What will I be able to do for the other week or so after I strike everything off my To-Do list? I can't just spend the whole time watching TV or getting lost in the Tokyo transit system.

You will have plenty to do, it is a very interesting city, very safe and the people are really interesting but I do find the food a little tough!!!
I would recommend hoping on the train and visiting other cities and also visit Mt. Fuji and the Hakkone as well - I dare you to eat a seven year egg!

I will be in your neck of the wood in June, I will have a three week holiday in BC...yes I will bring and post the CD I promised you!!!

Spending a few hours lost in the transit system would probably do you some good.

The most complex transit system I ever used was the Vancouver system and I couldn't get lost.
Okay, so I guess I can take a trip out to the more rural areas and see what it's like so I'll search some places up.
Than again, how "rural" can you get in the Tokyo area? I have several chores I gotta do up in Hikarigaoka but even that still seems like a suburb.

Quote:

I will be in your neck of the wood in June, I will have a three week holiday in BC...yes I will bring and post the CD I promised you!!!

You are cutting things fine. Depending on which time in June I'll either be up in the interior or down in Vancouver.

A lot of those places are too xenophobic to even allow 外国人 inside, so unless you can speak Japanese pretty well, you're probably SOL anyway. しょうがない、ね？

Fortunately, within Tokyo, it's kinda hard to get lost on the various mass transit systems, since most everything is bi-lingual. Make sure you have a guide with you (or someone that can read kanji) if you leave Tokyo, though. (Back in a day, Zone81 used to have all sorts of train/subway/bus information, but it looks like that site is gone...)

A lot of those places are too xenophobic to even allow 外国人 inside, so unless you can speak Japanese pretty well, you're probably SOL anyway. しょうがない、ね？

Interesting, I also read something like this somewhere else. So basically this is quite a well-known occurrence in Japan, that people (read: tourists and such) just have to ‘deal with,’ but yet I've never heard much of an outcry about it in the media here. No international boycotts against Japan like against South Africa (for example). I also read once that demographically speaking, they have less than 3% “non-Japanese,” in terms of ethnic minorities, but most political parties seem to be discontent with that and have pledged that they want to reduce that over time.

Which speaking of, does anyone know why Japan barely allows refugees in? I mean, Japan is often considered to be part of the “West,” it being in the G7 and so on, but they seem to be pretty reluctant to participate in things like these. I don't know an incredible lot about Japan, so if anyone could enlighten me I'd be very grateful.

Which speaking of, does anyone know why Japan barely allows refugees in? I mean, Japan is often considered to be part of the “West,” it being in the G7 and so on, but they seem to be pretty reluctant to participate in things like these. I don't know an incredible lot about Japan, so if anyone could enlighten me I'd be very grateful.

Respect the emperor and expel the barbarians. !!
I mean how would you feel if Admiral Perry steamed his black ships into your harbor..??

Racial purity is almost as important as the cast system in Japan. Read the real history of Japan. Like how the English and the USA dragged Japan into the second world war by cutting off oil supplies from Indonesia and elsewhere to Japans conquest of China. Do you really think that Tojo woke up one day and said "fuck it i'm bored let's go to pearl harbor" ...completely unprovoked...??

The policy of isolation lasted for more than 200 years. In 1844, William II of the Netherlands sent a message urging Japan to open her doors, which resulted in Tokugawa shogunate's rejection.[17] On July 8, 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry of the U.S. Navy with four warships—the Mississippi, Plymouth, Saratoga, and Susquehanna—steamed into the bay at Edo, old Tokyo, and displayed the threatening power of his ships' cannons during a Christian burial, which the Japanese observed. He requested that Japan open to trade with the West. These ships became known as the kurofune, the Black Ships.
The following year, at the Convention of Kanagawa on March 31, 1854, Perry returned with seven ships and requested that the Shogun sign the "Treaty of Peace and Amity," establishing formal diplomatic relations between Japan and the United States. Within five years Japan had signed similar treaties with other western countries. The Harris Treaty was signed with the United States on July 29, 1858. These treaties were widely regarded by Japanese intellectuals as unequal, having been forced on Japan through gunboat diplomacy, and as a sign of the West's desire to incorporate Japan into the imperialism that had been taking hold of the rest of the Asian continent. Among other measures, they gave the Western nations unequivocal control of tariffs on imports and the right of extraterritoriality to all their visiting nationals. They would remain a sticking point in Japan's relations with the West up to the turn of the century.

How about the British enslaving millions of Chinese with opium.... and the Westerner's tariffs and trades zones of in China??
I bet they don't teach you about that in your education system...

Rhetorically speaking, isn't that racism? South Africa was internationally boycotted, so was Zimbabwe, and they merely enforced segregation. Yet there's no international outcry about what goes on in Japan, which I find that rather curious. I wonder how that is and how this has come to be?

Quote:

Read the real history of Japan. Like how the English and the USA dragged Japan into the second world war by cutting off oil supplies from Indonesia and elsewhere to Japans conquest of China. Do you really think the Tojo woke up one day and said "fuck it i'm bored let's go to pearl harbor" ...completely unprovoked...??

The relatively little I know about Japan and its history is that they industrialized, at first, by ‘adapting’ many things of the Dutch.

I remember this was discussed during history classes, for which was some attention at the time because of a Japanese delegation that came to the Netherlands. A friend of mine from Rotterdam told me how many of the WWII naval vessels from Japan were built in accordance to Dutch standards, the hulls and so on; they often were even constructed with manufacturing equipment from the Netherlands, from the Rotterdam shipyards specifically.

It's a bit strange though, no Japanese are discriminated against in the Netherlands — which would actually be against the law — and they're treated in a hospitable manner. But, if I were to go to Japan and a place ‘prohibited’ for me as a non-Japanese, I'd just have to have peace with that? It seems a bit like a double standard to me. Particularly that there's absolutely no outcry about it, whatsoever.

The Japanese government has blocked legal efforts to clamp down on child pornography, with the country becoming the world's "kiddie porn superpower," according to a pressure group.

The ruling Democratic Party of Japan has refused to support legislation that would outlaw the possession of child pornography on the grounds that it would infringe individuals' freedom of expression – although there has been a stepped-up police campaign against people that sell sexual images of children.

Twenty people were arrested this week for posting child pornography on a mobile phone web site that was set up by a 17-year-old high school student, while Japan was shocked earlier this year at the arrest of a mother who took indecent images of her infant son and sold them via the internet.